London Publishing Partnership

The aim of most public sector digitization programmes is the status quo, delivered more cheaply. Rather than saving the public from bureaucracy, digital has created new administrative burdens. The public are engaged as consumers in a way that misunderstands the nature of what makes public services public. Instead of digital being recognised as critical to the operation of a modern state, it is too often an afterthought. It’s time to share the benefits of digital with the public more fully. This book describes the types of interaction we should expect from the next generation of public services, the digital platforms and infrastructure they will be built with, and the public sector design values needed to make them a reality. It includes thirty illustrated design patterns, ten strategic interventions, and global examples of emerging patterns in digital government. It also highlights some foundational ideas in computer science, design and public policy to show how the challenges posed by the digital state are neither novel nor new. The book will enable more policy professionals to think like technologists and designers, and it will help more technologists and designers to think about public policy.

All organizations are becoming service organizations. But most weren't built to deliver services successfully end-to-end, and the human, operational and financial impacts are abundantly clear. In the digital era the stakes are even higher, given how rapidly services change. Yet default working practices (governance, planning, funding, leadership, reporting, programme and team structures) inside large organizations haven't changed. Rather than modernize just one service at a time, it's the underlying organizational conditions that need to be transformed - anything less is futile. The Service Organization is the result of years of research and consulting, as well as dozens of interviews with executives. It explores significant challenges that leaders will recognize, and turns them into solvable puzzles by providing practical advice and tools that reimagine what the organization does from the perspective of its customers - and it organizes the activity needed to deliver the best outcomes. This book is for everyone involved, from designers to technologists and from operational staff to policymakers and leaders. It includes surprisingly simple and doable, but non-obvious, steps that don't depend on seniority or pay band and that are typically overlooked by even the most progressive professions, teams and companies. Kate Tarling sets a bold, ambitious and practical agenda for all service organizations. Her book is full of behind-the-scenes examples from the global companies, public sector bodies and non-profits that are now delivering and leading successful services. It shows how to reinvent organizations so they rely not just on 'transforming technology' but on putting the success of their services at the heart of how they operate.